Rhyming and Reading

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Did you know that reading nursery rhymes to your child can help them develop essential reading skills? Rhyming and reading go hand in hand. Before a child learns to read, they must be able to break through the layers of spoken language. Rhyming is one of children’s earliest opportunities to play with parts of language and develop the phonological awareness skills needed for reading.

Reading and Phonological Awareness

Phonological awareness is the ability to hear sounds in spoken language and is the foundation of learning to read. A child’s brain first processes language as one large entity. Slowly they start to realize that language consists of individual words, then that those words are broken up into syllables, and lastly that syllables are broken into single sounds. Collectively, those skills encompass phonological awareness. A deeper explanation of phonological awareness can be found here.

Once a child is able to hear the individual sounds in words, they can begin to connect those sounds to letters. Now students can use their phonics skills of letter and sound matching to read words and become proficient readers.

whole entity, words, syllables, single sounds

Rhyming and Reading

Reading and rhyming are linked. Rhyming allows children to break through the layers of language and recognize that words come apart. For instance, when a child knows that cat and mat rhyme, it is because they are focusing on the ending sound at. Then they can continue to break words into even smaller portions of individual sounds, also known as phonemic awareness.

Phonemic awareness is the ability to hear individual sounds in words. According to researchers, it is the most important skill in learning to read. Rhyming facilitates the understanding that words come apart, which builds to breaking words into individual sounds (phonemic awareness), and lastly allows children to associate letters to the sounds (phonics). Now they are ready to sue the letter-sound correlations to read words.

child parent reading

Early Developmental Benchmarks by Age

Dr. Sally Shaywitz, author of Overcoming Dyslexia, has outlined early developmental benchmarks to look for in your child. Understanding these will help ensure your child is on track to becoming a skilled reader. 

Age 3-4

  • Understand that sentences and words come apart
  • Identify ten letters of the alphabet

Age 4-5

  • Break spoken words into syllables 
  • Identify if two spoken words rhyme (Ex: Do hand and frog rhyme? Do bed and red rhyme?)

Age 5-5.5

  • Count the number of syllables in spoken words
  • Produce a rhyming word (Ex: what word rhymes with dog?)
  • Identify all capital and lowercase letters

Age 5.5-6

  • Identify the same beginning sounds in spoken words (Ex: What word begins with the same sounds as cat? Dog, bed, or car)
  • Identify the same ending sounds in spoken words (Ex: What word ends in the same sound as bat? Kid, hat, or car)
  • Count the number of sounds in small words (Ex: How many sounds do you hear in the word me? Hi? My?)
  • Identify the beginning sounds in words (Ex: What is the first sound in the word dog?)
  • Blends sounds together (Ex: What word do you get when you blend the sounds (z) and (oo) together?)
letters

How To Help Your Child

Phonological awareness skills such as rhyming come easy for many children. For others, performing these skills is a struggle and can be an indicator of future reading problems. Thankfully, it is easy to practice these skills at home with your children.  Phonological awareness skills have everything to do with sounds so all you need is your voice. If your child struggles with rhyming words, follow our link to a step-by-step guide on how to help them. Parents can also follow this link to other phonological and phonemic awareness activities you can do with your child.

What are some ways that you have practiced rhyming with your child? Let us know in the comments or on our connect page!